Spin relaxation caused by thermal excitations of high-frequency modes of cantilever vibrations

We consider the process of spin relaxation in the oscillating cantilever-driven adiabatic reversals technique in magnetic-resonance force microscopy. We simulated the spin relaxation caused by thermal excitations of the high-frequency cantilever modes in the region of the Rabi frequency of the spin subsystem. The minimum relaxation time obtained in our simulations is greater than but of the same order of magnitude as one measured in recent experiments. We demonstrated that using a cantilever with nonuniform cross-sectional area may significantly increase spin-relaxation time. © 2003 The American Physical Society.